G20 Accountability Report on Domestic Financial Regulations
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G20 Accountability Report on Domestic Financial Regulation John Kirton and Zaria Shaw G20 Research Group November 10, 2010 Introduction Significance Financial regulation and supervision stands at the heart of the G20’s seminal mission to promote financial stability in the world. It similarly stands at the core of the first G20 summit held in Washington in November 2008 to respond to the devastating financial crisis afflicting America and the globe. It has been a constant subject of attention and action at virtually every G20 finance ministers’ and summit meeting since the G20 was created in 1999. It is one of the most challenging issues for G20 governance, for it requires G20 governors to examine in detail the domestic policies of their sovereign state members. It is a particular challenge for the those few select countries that contain the world’s foremost, full strength financial centers to make such adjustments, for they are the world’s leading, often imperial powers, with all the competitive advantage and self- confidence flowing from their global pre-eminence in the financial services industry, with ownership of the institutional and intellectual model behind its regulation and supervision. Accountability, more generally, is a critical component of assessing the effectiveness and legitimacy of G20 governance. At their first summit in Washington, G20 leaders emphasized the importance of implementing their commitments, and established detailed timelines, targets and processes to help them in this task. For their fourth summit in Toronto, host Stephen Harper proclaimed that accountability would be the “defining feature” of the G20 summit as well as the G8 summit. In March, 2010, Harper joined the leaders of the US, the United Kingdom, Korea and France in a letter to G20 colleagues to assert: “now is the time for the leaders of the G20 both to recommit themselves and deliver on the ambitious reform objectives and agenda we have already agreed to and to explore co-operative approaches to meeting our common goals. We all know that an agreement to act is just a start. It is acting on the agreement that matters. We are all accountable.” Lee Myung-bak (2010a), the host of the fifth G20 summit in Seoul, noted as early as January 2010 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that implementing previous commitments would be the top priority at the Seoul summit. Competing Assessments The compliance and accountability of G20 members with their commitments on financial regulation is the subject of a debate among several competing school of thought. One school of optimists argues, in the words of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Secretary General Angel Gurria (2010), that “G20 members have planned or started to implement policies that will help meet leaders’ commitments on fiscal policy, measures to strengthen financial regulation and supervision.” A second school of pessimists sees no serious steps to date. As Professor Christopher Kobrak (2010) puts it “as yet no concrete steps have emerged…[despite] many relatively straightforward and politically acceptable measures that G20 members might easily agree to implement if they have the political will to act in concert and enforce their will on those who trade with them.” Simon Johnson (quoted in Hersh 2010) sees the G20 approach of relying on the Financial Stability Board (FSB) for compliance as a ‘sophisticated delaying action” while Adam Hersh (2010) judges that the FSB’s abilities to fulfill this responsibility “remain opaque.” A third school sees a mixed and inadequate record. Jenilee Guebert and Marina Larionova (2010) note that the G20 summit’s commitment to expand and reform the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) into the FSB was delivered swiftly and transparently, while promises to improve G20 accountability in general have been “weak at best.” Alan Alexandroff (2010) argues that the existing mechanisms the G20 has relied on for monitoring and encouraging compliance, notably by mandating international organizations to perform this task in select areas, is inadequate to meet the need. A fourth school insists it is too soon to judge the results achieved. In their 2010 G20 financial regulatory report, Ivan Savic and Nick Roudev examine the progress on reforms the US, the EU, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada have taken from November 2008 to June 2010. They conclude that present reforms will be on-going, may take years to fully implement and that it is thus too early to assess their impact on overall financial stability. As there is no one global financial system but rather a “series of linked national financial systems” that are increasingly interconnected but have varying goals, structures and operations, there remains a need for tailored financial regulation at the national level with common standards and increased transparency that all countries should adopt. None of these schools provide a convincing account of the degree and trend of G20 members’ compliance with the commitments on financial regulation. None has conducted a comprehensive account of the actual record of compliance of all members with the many such commitments, nor even that of key members with the central commitments. The G20’s own self-reporting in annexes to its early communiqués and the few outside assessments that exist lack country-specific reporting based on a systematic review. However, there is now just enough such data from the work of the G20 Research Group and the State University-Higher School of Economics (HSE) to identify the level and trends of compliance to date, as a foundation for more comprehensive and continuing assessments in the years ahead. The Argument Over its four summits from November 2008 in Washington to June 2010 in Toronto, financial regulation has taken an average of 44.3% of the summit communiqués ranging G20 Accountability Report on Domestic Financial Regulation 2 from a high of 78.6% in Washington to a low of 21.6% at Pittsburgh in September 2009 (see Appendix D). In the realm of collective decision-making, the G20 leaders devoted 65.7% of their commitments at Washington to financial regulation, 28.2% at London, 23.8% at Pittsburgh and 18% at Toronto for an average of 33.9% over the four summits thus far (see Appendix E). Compliance by the members with these commitments in the time until the subsequent summit has been modest. Based on the five comprehensive, systematic compliance assessments on financial regulation conducted across the first four G20 summits, the average compliance performance was +0.23 (61.5%), within a range from +1.00 for full compliance to -1.00 for no compliance or for action antithetical to the commitment itself (percentages on the more common scale of 0-100% have been included in brackets). While the average score is solidly in the positive range, it is rather low. Moreover, there is a great variation across summits, in a yoyo or rollercoaster pattern, with Washington at +0.47 (73.5%), London at 0.0 (50%), Pittsburgh at +0.15 (57.5%) and Toronto at -0.10 (55%) (see Appendix F). While the US, UK, France and Canada comply most, no single member has a perfect compliance score. However, three main inferences from the data stand out. First, American leadership arises, at the hands of both a Republican and Democratic president, primarily through its institutional role and responsibility as a G20 host. Second, crisis alone is not enough to induce high compliance, for while crisis- catalyzed Washington did well, the Toronto summit dedicated to containing the euro- crisis did not. Finally, membership in outside clubs, more than an individual country’s status as advanced or not, makes a desirable difference, with membership in the G7, G8 plus EU and the OECD all seeming to have a compliance inducing effect. The Issue Area Defined The issue area of financial regulation for the G20 consists primarily of standards and codes, and the ability of the government and regulating agencies to enforce financial principles and rules in the areas of: accounting, banking, credit rating agencies, derivatives, hedge funds, insurance, mutual funds, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, private equity, and securities. The G20 have emphasized the importance of national financial supervisory bodies ensuring that domestic regulations are enforced, that transparent financial reporting is maintained and that there is surveillance for fraudulent activity. The FSB, formerly the FSF, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are the main organizations working with the G20 to accomplish these goals. The FSB is dedicated to maintaining internationally agreed high standards in a common and coherent international framework. National financial authorities can use these standards in their countries consistent with national circumstances and systematic cooperation between countries. In 2009, the FSB was extended to include all G20 countries to regulate and oversee all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets, including hedge funds and credit rating agencies. There has also been discussion among the G20 of an international regulatory body coming into force to assist national authorities. The IMF is working with the G20 and the FSB in financial surveillance to promote international financial stability. In this area the task of the Fund is to monitor G20 Accountability Report on Domestic Financial Regulation 3 macroeconomic and financial developments and provide early warning of risks of instability and crises in respective countries. The G20’s Deliberative Performance The G8 Long before the G20 began dealing with domestic financial regulation and supervision with its creation in 1999, the older Group of Eight and Group of Seven (G8/G7), which established the G20, also addressed the subject. The G7, which began meeting in 1975, consists of Canada, the European Union (EU), France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The G8, which includes Russia, began meeting at the leaders’ level in 1998.